A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BENIN AND WARRI PIDGIN ENGLISH

ABSTRACT
This work tries to compare the similarities and differences existing the Warri pidgin spoken in Delta state and the Benin pidgin spoken in Edo State by resident, of Warri and Benin, respectively.
This research work further revealed that pidgin English used in Warri and Benin does not have semantic relationships with the standard English. Example in standard English, the word “ red” signifies colour but in pidgin language used by residents of warri, it means bad situation; example “bross e don red o” meaning “brother the situation is bad”.
A noteworthy feature in the Benin pidgin English is the strong influence of the mother tongue in their use of pidgin i.e the influence of the mother tongue is greatly seen when the Benin people speak pidgin.